Useless SEO: No Call Tracking

What you will learn: Why your SEO campaign will fail without phone call tracking.

Who should read this article: Sales and marketing leadership.

Most Search Marketing Firms Are Doing It Wrong

In a recent PPC study, Search Engine Land reported that 54% of search marketers don’t track phone conversions from their campaigns. This is true even though the same survey revealed that 63% of those surveyed said, “phone leads are as valuable or more valuable than Web conversions.”

Do you know what surprised us? The fact that 37% of those marketers did NOT think phone leads are as valuable or more valuable than Web conversions.

If these dynamics are true for PPC, they probably hold true for SEO as well.

Why Call Tracking Is an Absolute Necessity

With more than 10 years of managing SEO campaigns under our belt, we can say without hesitation that phone inquiries are as valuable or more valuable than Web conversions. To demonstrate, take a look at the results of our own lead tracking over the last six months:

Phone Inquiries

Total – 36,219

Leads – 17,093

Not Leads – 19,126

Form Inquiries

Total – 20,103

Leads – 15,055

Not Leads – 5,048

By nature, phone inquiries generate a greater number of non-leads than do form inquiries, due to misdials, auto-dialers (bots), sales solicitations, personal calls, job solicitations, etc. Nevertheless, phone calls generated more aggregate sales leads than did forms.

But you don’t have to be an SEO expert or a number cruncher in order to understand why phone inquiries matter. People are more likely to pick up a phone when they really want something. And, despite our nonstop use of computers and smart phones, many people are simply uncomfortable doing business through a computer screen – especially serious business.

Executive Summary

Bottom Line 1: If you don’t track phone inquiries, you have no idea how well your SEO campaign is performing.

Bottom Line 2: Be sure that your SEO company knows what it is doing. You must have a very thorough and careful vetting process to avoid pouring money down an SEO sinkhole.

Bottom Line 3: Even if an SEO company is tracking phone inquiries, it may STILL be doing it wrong! Not all tracking technologies are equally reliable. Even more important, unless the agency validates sales leads – to distinguish true phone leads from misdials, sales solicitations, personal calls, etc. – you STILL won’t know how many actual leads your SEO campaign is producing.